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The Best List Of Mindmapping, Flow Chart Tools, & Graphic Organizers

I’m just making this a very “quick and dirty” list — at least for now — because, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how or why all the online mindmapping and flow-chart tools that are out there have any educational application.

It seems to me that there really isn’t much of a value-added benefit to doing any of this online as opposed to doing it on pen and paper — except, perhaps, it will look a lot nicer (and save paper). I do have my students use a lot graphic organizers in the classroom, and am including some resources for them in this list, too.

I can think of some minor advantages with a couple of the online tools on this list, but not much more. Please help me out if I’m missing something.

Here are a list of what seems to me the better mind-mapping and flow chart tools (all free and all accessible to English Language Learners), and sources for hard-copy graphic organizers, out there:

MINDMAPPING & FLOW CHART TOOLS:

Mind42 is a free online web application that has an incredible collection of features. You can collaborate with multiple users in real time, and see what people are doing right on the screen in front of you. You can communicate with them using a chat feature. The interface is relatively simple. You can grab images off the web and easily insert them in your work. These are all the options, it seems to me, you’d want to include in an ideal application that, for example, “sister classes” separated by a wide geographical distance could use in joint projects. However, there is one problem. I can’t quite figure out what students would create that would be useful. Nevertheless, I still did include it in The Best Online Tools For Real-Time Collaboration.

Gliffy is another online mindmapping tool. My English Language Learner students have been able to use that tool to create nifty floor plans but, again, they could have easily done that with markers and paper. (NOTE: In March, 2016, the last time this post was completely revised and update, Gliffy was experiencing a major outage. I assume they’ve repaired it, but am not sure)

A brand new one is called Lovely Charts, and it might have the most functionality of them all. TechCruch just wrote about it. Even with all that “lovely” capability, I’m still at a loss in figuring out its educational value.

Creately is a new online diagramming web tool that just opened to the public. Tech Crunch has a detailed explanation about it, so instead of “reinventing the wheel,” I’m just going to suggest you read their post.

I find graphic organizers to be indispensable in helping students learn how to write, though neither my students nor I have found it particularly beneficial to use them online.

I believe the best writing curriculum out there is, by far, the one offered by the WRITE Institute. It’s focused on English Language Learners, but we’ve certainly used their materials successfully with mainstream students as well. Their curriculum, however, is only available to schools who’s Districts have an official “partnership” with them. The use of graphic organizers is a key element of their units.

In addition to the graphic organizers in The Write Institute curriculum, here are the sources of other good ones. Some you can actually use online, but you can also print all of them out for use by students away from computers. They include:

I learned about Exploratree through Lucy Gray. Exploratree is a site that has a series of “thinking guides” that can be adapted by teachers and completed by students. They appear to basically be well-designed graphic organizers, and include titles like “Thinking Boxes” and “From a Different Angle.”

Read Write Think also has a helpful collection of graphic organizers that can be used online or printed-out.

Graphic Organizers is the title of an excellent article by Tracey Hall & Nicole Strangman. It gives an overview of graphic organizers and research study results on their effectiveness.

Holt has a nice collection of graphic organizers, thought you probably won’t find any that aren’t at other sites on this list. What it does have, though, that the others do not is an excellent list of teaching notes for each individual graphic organizer listed. That’s a real find, especially for teachers not familiar with using them.

I learned about TUZZit from Carla Arena. It’s a free online graphic organizer tool that provides lots of different options of organizers (you can also create your own); lets you paste online images videos, virtual post-it notes and more onto them; and then you can share your creation with online collaborators. In some ways it seems like an Exploratree on steriods.

15 Comments

I’ve found that using these tools in conjunction with another project can be useful. My students used bubbl.us last semester when brainstorming topics for their online newspaper and it was useful because as the semester went on, they could revise their map. Also – and this may seem silly – they couldn’t lose the map! So, when they forgot their ideas later in the semester, they could easily refer back to the map because it was saved online. Finally, as a member of their collaborative team, I was able to provide feedback more readily than with a traditional paper map.

In the future, I’ll have students link their maps to their wiki project so that at the end of the project, they can reflect on their learning process.

Online mind maps are good for collaborative projects, say projects with your sister schools, where you are physically separated. You can do those either together, or at different times. The use that alyssar put mind maps to can be done with computer based mind map software that is either online, or a desktop program (like Inspiration). In addition to what alyssar shared, you can use them to create whole class charts during direct instruction (KWLs, MindMaps, Clues Problems Wonderings, etc.) that can be archived, and reviewed later.

Thanks for highlighting resources from ReadWriteThink. We are very proud of what we have to offer on the site! If you are interested, we pay educators in the field to publish lesson plans and share teaching ideas. Let me know if you would like more information.

Maybe you’d find my non-commercial list of mind mapping and concept mapping tools useful. The numbers are over a hundred now. It has screenshots, prices and links to the original sites with a brief description. It is here:http://www.mind-mapping.org/

Hi, I am a teacher looking for a 3-d graphic organizer that i learned about in an ELL workshop. It involves weaving strips construction paper through slits of another piece of construction paper to make this incredibly fun/comples tool that flips open to create two folds of 8 squares; then you can flip it over and use the other blank side; i am not explaining it well, but if you have ever seen one you’ll know exactly what im talking about. I need help remembering how to make them…l

Also check out Describio (http://www.describio.com). You can use it to to create organizational charts and flowcharts that actually work. The tool is more interactive than most of the other tools around. For example, you can switch the views for org charts and add full-screen bios for each person.

Mind maps and concept maps only work well when the concepts fit into a nice, neat hierarchy. Many times, we would like to show associations to concepts outside of the hierarchy or not have a hierarchy at all. There is a software tool called the “Idea Shuffler” that works well with both hierarchical and non-hierarchical structures. The tool supports layers of interconnected diagrams, single click supporting documentation, and automated location of concepts. It is a great tool for many applications including writing.

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